Where it all began.
I became a mother, and my role at work narrowed. In my life, meanwhile, so much was happening. That contradiction sparked a search into the skills we develop through living, and how to carry them from one role to another.
Watch on PBS · 28 April 2025
Read the summary
In this video, I talk about returning to work after becoming a mother, and a paradox: as my professional role narrowed, I was discovering new resources in my life. A crisis management course, complete with a flight simulator, helped me recognise how much I was already practising every day at home. That insight led Andrea Vitullo and me to develop Life Based Learning. The way we see our roles changes too: we can see them as circles that expand our possibilities, connecting what we learn across different experiences.
Background
With a past as a manager and a present as an entrepreneur and researcher, convinced that within each person there is a hidden and immense wonder waiting only to be seen, Riccarda developed a methodology, Life Based Learning, that allows to identify, measure and activate the skills and character traits that emerge from every role people play: from family to work, from hobbies to life events, both planned and unexpected. The digital platform developed by Lifeed, the company Riccarda founded in 2015, has measured a 140% increase in available resources across over 70,000 people, thanks to the ability to see “everything they are.” For over ten years, Riccarda has been giving talks, writing articles and books on topics concerning diversity, work-life balance, the potential of different generations and minorities, a new way of defining leadership and changing the world of work and society through self-care and care for others.
Vision
Every time something big, difficult, or surprising happens in our lives, it brings with it skills and energies that interact with everything we already are, exchanging resources. This is how we grow throughout life, discover we are stronger, and help each other, learning to take care of ourselves and the world.
Bio
Riccarda completed a Master’s programme in Behavioural Neuroscience at Università Cattolica in Milan and has a passion for how people learn.
She is many things at once: a researcher, a social entrepreneur, a mother, a sister, a volleyball player, an ex-wife, a friend, a terrible cook, a messy reader and “a kind of writer”. She has an autism diagnosis: the spectrum is broad, and labels alone always tell too little.
Books
Riccarda’s books trace a path that unites care and work: from the experience of motherhood as a master’s in soft skills to the difference that emerges when we put heart into work, up to an innovative taxonomy that brings out key competencies from care to change the world of work and improve society.
Talks
From Japan to the United States, from Turkey to Milan, Naples, Rome and Syracuse: for over ten years, Riccarda has been traveling the world, invited to the most prestigious universities, embassies, prisons, NGOs, schools and professional conferences to share her vision and present the incredible data showing how the synergy between life and work creates extra resources available to people and the entire world.
Press
From Forbes to Il Sole 24 Ore, from specialized education magazines to international TV shows and personality blogs: Riccarda has shared her experience across global media channels, and everywhere she has garnered enthusiasm from women, young people, parents, caregivers, and all those seeking a new vision that no longer forces them to choose between life and work.
Thoughts
Scattered and organized attempts to explain the data and vision that guide Life Based Learning and how “transilience” works: the superpower of those who have a rich life (proposed in the MAAM book and since 2023 a neologism in the Treccani dictionary).
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